Forest rangers have arrested a group of six people for killing wild animals, including probably brown-shanked douc langurs, a rare and precious wildlife species, in a national park in central Vietnam.

The wildlife killing took place at Bach Ma National Park, located in Thua Thien-Hue Province’s Phu Loc District, Nguyen Vu Linh, the park’s director, announced on Friday.

During a patrol session in the park on Tuesday, a forest ranger team detected a group of six men carrying many sacks while illegally passing a forest.

The strangers ran away when they saw the officers, but the patrollers eventually arrested them, all hailing from the province’s Nam Dong District, Linh said.

Searching the sacks, the rangers found a homemade shotgun, nine bullets, a machete, and the carcasses and parts of wild animals, including two colugos, one civet, six primate heads, and three primate bodies with all limbs cut off.

The park authority is examining and verifying the hair and skin samples from the six primate heads.

“Based on our experience, these six primate heads may belong to the brown-shanked douc langur, one of the endangered, rare, and precious wild animal species," the director said.

"They could be from the same herd that had been killed in the park.”

The park has coordinated with local police to interrogate the six men, aged from 24 to 44, who admitted to the offense of illegally entering the park for hunting wild animals.  

Police officers are continuing their investigation into the case.

Under Vietnam’s Penal Code, transporting, trading, capturing or killing wild animals or parts thereof is a criminal offense punishable by six months to 12 years in prison.

Since 1994, Vietnam has been an official member of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which is a multilateral treaty that protects endangered plants and animals. 

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